Why it works: Grape and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,490 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Grape Juice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Pick the grapes from the stem and mash them in a porcelain dish to a pulp.
Drain off the juice and strain it through cheesecloth.
Sweeten and bottle
Add 1 cup of sugar for each quart of juice.
Heat the mixture to boiling but do not let it boil.
Fill immediately into glass jars or bottles and seal.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together7,490 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Grapes
- Provide the juice and the main flavour of the drink.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the grape juice.
The step that matters
Heat without boiling. Heating the juice to just below boiling warms it enough to help preserve it while keeping its fresh grape flavour. Boiling would drive off aroma and can make the juice taste cooked.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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